Fabrication and characterization of superconducting circuit QED devices for quantum computation

We present fabrication and characterization procedures of devices for circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED). We have made 3 GHz cavities with quality factors in the range 10^4--10^6, which allow access to the strong coupling regime of cQED. The cavities are transmission line resonators made by photolithography. They are coupled to the input and output ports via gap capacitors. An Al-based Cooper pair box is made by ebeam lithography and Dolan bridge double-angle evaporation in superconducting resonators with high quality factor. An important issue is to characterize the quality factor of the resonators. We present an RF-characterization of superconducting resonators as a function of temperature and magnetic field. We have realized different versions of the system with different box-cavity couplings by using different dielectrics and by changing the box geometry. Moreover, the cQED approach can be used as a diagnostic tool of qubit internal losses.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, Applied Superconductivity Conference 200

Measurement of a Vacuum-Induced Geometric Phase

Berry's geometric phase naturally appears when a quantum system is driven by an external field whose parameters are slowly and cyclically changed. A variation in the coupling between the system and the external field can also give rise to a geometric phase, even when the field is in the vacuum state or any other Fock state. Here we demonstrate the appearance of a vacuum-induced Berry phase in an artificial atom, a superconducting transmon, interacting with a single mode of a microwave cavity. As we vary the phase of the interaction, the artificial atom acquires a geometric phase determined by the path traced out in the combined Hilbert space of the atom and the quantum field. Our ability to control this phase opens new possibilities for the geometric manipulation of atom-cavity systems also in the context of quantum information processing.Comment: 5 + 6 page

Primary thermometry of propagating microwaves in the quantum regime

The ability to control and measure the temperature of propagating microwave modes down to very low temperatures is indispensable for quantum information processing, and may open opportunities for studies of heat transport at the nanoscale, also in the quantum regime. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate primary thermometry of propagating microwaves using a transmon-type superconducting circuit. Our device operates continuously, with a sensitivity down to $4\times 10^{-4}$ photons/\sqrt{\mbox{Hz}} and a bandwidth of 40 MHz. We measure the thermal occupation of the modes of a highly attenuated coaxial cable in a range of 0.001 to 0.4 thermal photons, corresponding to a temperature range from 35 mK to 210 mK at a frequency around 5 GHz. To increase the radiation temperature in a controlled fashion, we either inject calibrated, wideband digital noise, or heat the device and its environment. This thermometry scheme can find applications in benchmarking and characterization of cryogenic microwave setups, temperature measurements in hybrid quantum systems, and quantum thermodynamics